The Caribbean used to be an American lake — friendly waters, friendly neighbors, friendly resorts. Today it is a base for enemy maneuvers, a storehouse for enemy weapons, a training ground for enemy agents. The Communist star hangs ominously overhead. What happened?
The first Latin American country to be captured by the Communists was Guatemala. Fortunately, we had an anti-Communist President then. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Ambassador Whiting Willauer as the head of a team to bring about the overthrow of the Guatemalan Red regime. The mission was successful and cost very little.
Like many other prominent Americans, Eisenhower was deceived by Fidel Castro when he came to power in Cuba in 1957 preaching “agrarian reform.” But Eisenhower initiated plans to remedy his error. In December 1960, he appointed the experienced Willauer to supervise a similar overthow of Castro.
The Eisenhower Administration, however, was replaced by the Kennedy Administration in January 1961, and Willauer was fired in February. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961 had all the earmarks of planned defeat, and we have been stuck with Castro ever since.
When Jimmy Carter became President, his program for Latin America was based on the premise that we must accomodate to Marxist-Communist regimes and that U.S. “imperialism” is to blame for any unrest or underdevelopment in the Western Hemisphere. The particulars of his policy included giving away the Panama Canal, reconciliation with Castro’s Cuba, recognition of Castro’s claim to Guantanamo, withdrawing U.S. air surveillance and air, army and naval bases from the Caribbean, and a double-standard “human rights” policy that condemned anti-Communist regimes but not pro-Communist regimes.
Instead of trying to overthrow a Communist regime in the Caribbean as Eisenhower did, Carter overthrew the anti-Communist Somoza in Nicaragua and replaced him with a Marxist/Castro-style junta. The Carter Administration embargoed munitions for the (Somoza) Nicaraguan National Guard, prevented Somoza even from buying weapons from Israel, South Africa or Argentina, and then shipped U.S. arms to Panama where they were used by the Panamanians and Cubans from a base in Costa Rica to help the Communist Sandinistas to take over Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is now behaving like a Soviet-Castro satellite. Most of its ruling clique are Cuban trained and Cuba has 10,000 “advisors” in Nicaragua. Killings, torture and disappearances of hundreds of people are routine.
Naturally, pro-Communist Nicaragua is now eligible for the kind of U.S. aid which was denied to the anti-Communist Somoza, and the Carter Administration is pressing hard to send it $75 million. On the other hand, Carter cut off military sales to Guatemala, accusing it of “human rights” violations. Guatemala’s real fault is that it is effectively coping with its own Marxist revolutionaries.
Anyone who understands anything about politics, domestic or international, knows the importance of the factor which is variously labeled “momentum,” the “bandwagon technique,” or “the psychology of winning.” Despite Castro, despite some resentment against their big, rich neighbor to the north, Latin Americans respected the United States as the winner during all the pre-Carter years.
The tide has turned. The Soviet-Castro axis now has the momentum and everything the Carter Administration does seems to help the enemy’s momentum, not ours, including the Canal giveaway, and the selectivity of the “human rights” doctrine and U.S. aid. Our influence has deteriorated more since we gave away our Canal than before.
Most of our imported oil comes through the Caribbean, whether it originates in the Middle East, Venezuela, or Alaska, and much of it is even refined at offshore sites in the Caribbean. Almost half our oil is therefore under the gun of the following Soviet weapons now based in Cuba: 2 submarines, 18 large patrol ships, 27 missile-carrying fast attack ships, 24 torpedo-carrying fast attack ships, 40 MIG-19 interceptor aircraft, 80 MIG-21 interceptor aircraft, 75 MIG-17 fighter-bombers, 48 MIG-23/27 fighter-bombers, 80 transport planes, and, of course, the famous Soviet combat brigade.
We desperately need a strategy to stop Soviet-Castro momentum in the Caribbean. There is no time to lose.
